Lyman Group

Molecular Biophysics and Membrane Biochemistry

Department of Physics & Astronomy

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

University of Delaware

How do the peculiar material properties of the cell membrane emerge from the interactions between lipids and proteins? How does the cell exploit these properties to perform the physical chemistry of life? How, when, and why did different organisms evolve their particular complement of lipids? We address these questions by molecular simulation informed by theory, and through close collaboration with experimental colleagues. Our efforts focus on both methods development and the application of existing methods and advanced hardware to outstanding problems. Please follow the links to specific research projects to learn more.

Sasiri wins an award for her talk at BPS in CPH!

Congrats to Sasiri for winning a FEBS sponsored award for the best contributed talk at the BPS thematic meeting on "Lipidomic Complexity", held in Copenhagen in July this year. A great capstone on a really excellent meeting.

CPH really is the happiest city...

...and therefore was a great location for our BPS thematic meeting on "Lipidomic Complexity." It was many years delayed first by covid, and then by the untimely passing of our co-organizer Luis Bagatolli. The meeting was a celebration of Luis's life and foundational contributions to the biophysics of membranes.

Ed visita Univalle

Ed viajó a Cali para visitar Univalle con Diego. Fue maravilloso conocer a los mentores de investigación de pregrado de Diego y de Sasiri, y recorrer su ciudad natal. Diego fue un excelente anfitrión; ¡Ed espera volver pronto!

Diego wins a poster award at BPS in LA!

Congrats to Diego for winning an SRAA poster award at the annual BPS meeting in LA! What a great way to celebrate his first BPS meeting as a presenter!

Holiday lunch with Frida

The Lyman group showed our support for unibrows everywhere by posing for a picture with Frida. The lunch was good, too. Bivek tried coquito and Diego got a very fancy looking drink. Cheers!

Sasiri wins the Daicar-Bata award!

Sasiri won our department's award for the best paper in 2023-2024 for her Science paper on the Ctenos! The competition was fierce, with 11 students nominated. But she sealed the deal with an exceptional talk in front the whole department in the final round, and claimed the $3,000 top prize. Muchas felicidades a Sasiri!!

Sasiri at the Boulder School

In 2002 I attended the Boulder School for condensed matter physics. This year, Sasiri continues the tradition, and gets to spend a month in beautiful Boulder, learning physics and making new friends and connections.

The ctenos are published...in Science!

About three (or more?) years ago Itay Budin brought me into a really fun and interesting collaboration, that started with Steve Haddock, a marine biologist and expert on ctenophores. Turns out that ctenos that live deep build their membranes with a whole lot of PE plasmalogen. Lyman group members Sasiri Vargas Urbano and Miguel Pedraza Joya contributed simulations and analysis. Paper is here if you want to know more. The work has been reviewed in Scientific American, Nature News, News from Science, Popular Science, Physics Today

NIH MIRA awarded

Our incredible run of good fortune continues. We have just been awarded five years of funding to continue our work on lipid protein interactions. We have lots of exciting angles to pursue and are looking for two post-docs: Simulations of membrane proteins in asymmetric models of the plasma membrane, ML methods for membrane protein simulations and classification, and rampant speculation about the role of sterols and hopanoids on membrane structure/function.

Ed wins the Thomas E Thompson award!

I am full of gratitude after winning this year's TET award from the Membrane Structure and Function subgroup of the Biophysical Society. The MSF subgroup has been my home within BPS for many years, and it means the world to have the people who know our work best decide to honor my group in this way.

Ctenophore project funded through NSF IntBio!

Together with coPI's Itay Budin (UCSD) and Steve Haddock (MBARI) we have won an NSF award to study how ctenophores (aka "comb jellies") adapt to the pressure of the deep ocean by modifying their lipidomes.

Alison's paper accepted to BJ

Using a method she developed to sample the lipid solvation environment of our favorite GPCR, Alison has demonstrated a thermodynamic mechanism for lipid-dependent function. Preprint: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.20.259077v1

Congrats to Alison on her fellowship!

Alison has just won a prestigious F32 post-doctoral fellowship from the NIH!! Major victory for her and for the group!

Congrats to Mitch and Swapnil!

Mitchell Dorrell and Swapnil Baral successfully defended their dissertations, exactly one week apart! The group took the opportunity to celebrate at Elk Neck State Park, a much needed escape from the shut-in life.

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